U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/16/arne-duncan-white-surburban-moms-upset-that-common-core-shows-their-kids-arent-brilliant/
Dear Mr. Duncan,
I'm going to say what all mothers are thinking today. I might use some allegory, allusions, maybe even some three syllable words. As the son of the founder of the Sue Duncan Children's Center, created in 1961 by a Caucasian woman in the urban, poor predominantly African American Hyde Park district of Chicago, I think, if you just bear it out to the end, you'll get the point.
Kindly go fornicate yourself, preferably not in the public spotlight this time. When you're finished, please throw away your socks, don't wad them up and toss the ball into the hamper for your white surbuban mom, Sue, to wash. That would be terribly disrespectful.
Let's get to your meat, Mr. Duncan. You're 'fascination with "white suburban moms" really has nothing to do with us - moms of any kind, urban, country, suburban, and striped. However, your choice of words - and don't think for one second that we believe your utterance was accidental - actually says a lot about you and what's happening in your psyche.
We have already shared the legacy your mother has beget to you - a history that, according to you, was frought with threats and firebombs. And it must have difficult to play second fiddle to your father's, Starkey, research - a philosopher researcher who buried himself in social non-verbal interactions.
And somewhere along the line, it all fell apart, didn't it? Mom and Dad, each submerged in his and her own work... the marriage that succumbed to competing interests. Your own words tell us that you are still holding on to some resentment for childhood experiences missed.
You don't really have a problem with "white suburban moms." You take issue with "educated women." Yes, your three words, "white suburban moms" are code for my two words, "educated women," women who through their hard work (and the collective work of the family) are able to support their household on one income. You despise these women because, despite this hard work, they have found the time invest themselves in education advocacy. And if you want to get right to the hard and dirty - you hate them because they are what you claim children need - involved parents. These mothers resemble your own - a woman so deeply involved in the lives of other children that she sometimes neglected the psychological needs of her own.
The meat, Mr. Duncan, is that you had the opportunity to redefine public education and instead you embraced a Bush-ian education agenda to privatize education. It is a two-part plan that began with making a civil right into a competition. You counted on the under-educated urban masses to embrace your reform word game. You called their schools failures and swore those failures belonged to the adults - not the children.
Remember the lovely speech you gave at your confirmation hearing:
I come to this work with three deeply held beliefs.Hard to believe the same man that uttered these eloquent, albeit inaccurate words, would later and very publicly, disparage mothers - mothers like your own.
First, that every child from every background absolutely can be successful. Rural, suburban, urban, gifted, special ed., ELL, poor, minority -- it simply doesn't matter. When we -- when we -- when we, as adults, do our job and we give them opportunities to succeed, all of children can be extraordinarily successful.
Secondly, maybe the flip of that, when we fail to properly educate children, we as educators, we perpetuate poverty and we perpetuate social failure. And that's not something that I want to be a part of.
And third, our children have one chance -- one chance at a quality education, so that we must work with an extraordinary sense of urgency. Simply put, we cannot wait because they cannot wait. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/19/AR2009011901116_5.html
Phase I was relatively easy. You were counting on a certain demographic - the pure opposite of "white suburban moms" to be so detached from their children's education, to be so under-educated, that they could never mount a cogent argument against your plan - your competition. Call schools that serve the urban poor failures. Blame the educated masses - primarily women - that were working within those schools. Close these now-deemed failing schools and empower profitable charter schools to replace them. Rather succinctly, it all fell into place when you were directing the Ariel Education Initiative. How very capitalist of you. In fact, you thought you pretty much had this one wrapped up in a rubber with shiny bow.
Phase II - Implement Common Core Standards across all schools, not just the ones that you've deemed failing. With full scale implementation of a national curriculum that is not developmentally appropriate and the aligned high-stakes testing, these more affluent schools will earn themselves the failing label as well. Check the label, wash out the "public" part of education and spin in some charters and vouchers.
Only this phase has proven more difficult to implement. You've encounter women like your own mother - educated women who simply cannot sit out on the sidelines and let politics and capitalists destroy public education - women who see through your agenda and are willing to fight for all children, not just their own. Women who recognize that education is a civil right and not a competition.
Facts are facts, Arne. And when a high-powered idiot such as yourself make comments as incomprehensible as yours, it's usually indicative of a chink the armor. You chink is your resentment of your educated and empowered mother.
How very, very sad.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Word Verification May Be Case Sensitive